“Good practice?” Anna said.
“Gotta poop.”
“The postkickball poop!” Anna said, laughing nervously as though this were a perfectly normal thing for her to say. Something one of Brie’s much-younger friends might say.
“Uh-huh,” Brie said, breezing past Anna on her way to the bathroom.
Anna hit pause, got up, and turned the lights on. She threw away the plastic bag from the rice cakes and wiped the salsa ring on the table. She checked inside the bag of veggie chips. How many had she eaten? From the hallway, she could hear a flush and the sound of running water. Then Brie was back, wiping her hands on the butt of her shorts.
“What are you watching?” Brie said, head already in the refrigerator.
“This movie, Can’t They Always Make More?”
“I didn’t know you were into Gilman.”
“I love Gilman,” Anna found herself saying, unsure of whether she really loved Gilman or whether she was just happy to have something to talk about with Brie.
“You know that one, Rurik at the Drive-In?”
“Rurik, Rurik, Traffic Cop?”
“Yeah. Totally craptastic!”
“I know, right?” Anna said uncertainly. She always had trouble getting a read on Brie. Even when she wanted to kiss her ass, she could never predict where exactly Brie’s ass was going to be. It’s like she was always running around the room, lips at ass level, chasing after her. Maybe it was just the fact that Brie was still young enough to make declarative statements. She could still put periods, even exclamation marks, at the end of a sentence, whereas Anna had already changed her mind so many times about so many things it was all question marks and ellipses for her from here on in.
“But in a good way,” Brie said, reaching into the refrigerator for a cold quesadilla. “I love how he’s not afraid to just, like, let his movies be bad, you know?”
“It’s a style,” Anna said, pushing the bag of chips toward Brie.
“I love that one with the candy hearts. Oh, wait. I think I’m thinking of the girl.” She dipped the edge of the stiff quesadilla into Anna’s salsa. “You know, the other one? Who makes the movies on her cell phone?”
“I don’t think so.”
“They all hang out together,” Brie said. “God, what’s their name?”
Anna didn’t know.
“Shit. I feel like I just read about them on Daily Intel the other day. This is going to kill me,” Brie said. “I should text Rishi.” Brie went over to her bag and started unzipping various pockets.
“I just love the way, with his movies, it just is what it is, you know?” Anna said, feeling like she was finally finding her groove in this conversation. “He just lets things happen.”
But Brie wasn’t listening. “Shit,” she said, zipping and unzipping. “Where’s my cell phone?”
“Did you bring a jacket?” Anna said, standing up.
“Shit.” Brie was pulling things out of her bag, throwing them on the floor.
Anna made an effort to look concerned. “Should I check the bathroom?” she said.
“No. Fuck. It’s either on the bus or back at the park.”
“You’ll find it …,” Anna said, hoping she wouldn’t have to offer to go back to McCarren Park with Brie to hunt around in the dark grass for her cell phone.
“I can’t believe this,” Brie said, shaking her bag empty over the floor. Crumbs, bobby pins, pennies, receipts, pen caps, one of those inexplicable plastic Japanese toys with a head that was all teeth, a chewed-off thumbnail. Chinese fortunes—too many to count—drifted down like parade streamers.
“I’ll be back,” Brie said, standing up. She grabbed her wallet from the pile on the floor. “Can you stick this back in the fridge for me?” She nodded at the half-eaten quesadilla she’d set down on the couch.
Anna took the quesadilla, opening the door for Brie.
“If Rishi calls the landline, tell him what happened,” said Brie. Before the door eased shut behind her, she passed a reflexive hand over the light switch, leaving Anna in the dark once more.
3
Anna felt her way back across the room toward the laptop glow. She yanked the cord out of the wall, letting it drag behind her as she made her way down the hall. Even though Brie was gone, Anna still made sure the bedroom door was closed before pulling off her pants. She slid her bra out from under her T-shirt and dropped it on the pile on the floor. The bra didn’t have far to fall; the pile was almost as high as the bureau. Taking care of the pile was “on the list,” though the list itself was a kind of bureau-high pile, wasn’t it? Anna lay down on top of the comforter, pulled the laptop onto her bare thighs, and finger-typed Gilman into Hulu. Of course, Clean Rite Meltdown came up first, followed by Rurik and the film she’d just seen. But here was another one she hadn’t watched yet, Age of Consent.
Anna clicked on the title. And as the movie loaded, she wondered how Gilman made any money when everything was always free, right here, on the Internet. How did anyone make any money on the Internet when even Anna had never clicked on a banner ad in her life? Except that one time, for the free pair of Uggs. And in return for filling out some endless form about her customer preferences, what did she get? Nothing but aggressive, filter-eluding spam—not the kind worth collecting—for mortgage refinancing and “authentic quality pharmaceuticals.” Never again, she thought, and hit play.
There were no credits. No theme music. A black screen with the title faded in and faded out too fast. Then there was a man, sitting on a bed, with a paper bag over his head. The man had on khaki shorts and a bright blue T-shirt. The words Sun Microsystems stretched across the roll of fat in his lap in huge white letters. Daylight struggled against the shades, which were pulled all the way down. A lamp with a crooked shade tossed a warped football of light across the wall. The room reminded Anna of one of those shabby motor inns where you drive right up to the door and all the windows face the parking lot. Other than the lamp, the only decorations were the radiator and a potted ivy on the windowsill that may have been plastic.
“This is where I keep my collection,” the man said. Two eye-holes had been punched into the bag, also a slit for the mouth, through which wet lips and a swatch of mustache were visible. “Under the bed.” He bent down, felt around, and pulled out a large plastic bag.
“Does it matter which one we start with? No? OK, so this one is Penthouse Forum,” he began, taking out a magazine and laying it on the bedspread. “It’s, like, just letters about celebrity fantasies and shit like that. It’s not that interesting, actually. It’s kind of a joke. Look at this. Every letter always starts out with the same horseshit line. ‘I never thought these letters were real, until I decided to write one myself,’” the man mimicked in a low, husky voice, then laughed from inside the bag. “Almost like parodies of letters, you know? And the celebrities are … where is it …” The man started flipping through the magazine. “Yeah, man, check this one out,” he held up a page and the camera zoomed in on a photo of Andie MacDowell wearing a red dress, smiling hard. “Who’s gonna jerk off to some has-been MILF that’s not even showing her vah jay jay, right? Who’s gonna jerk off to Andie MacDowell? Would you, man?” he snorted. “I think I saw this same photo later, too, in a Campari ad. I guess it doesn’t matter, though. If I’m already horny almost anything will work. It’s like I’m just looking for that final, uh, you know, push.” The man put the magazine back in the bag. “So that’s Forum. But they have ads for these nine-hundred numbers,